Reviews

Very reminiscent of X-Men for sure! And a soundtrack to go along with it? I was actually impressed with this one! It’s short for a graphic novel which made it a quick read. Read like you’d watch a series.

aristhought's review

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1.0

I’m all for edgier/grittier queer coming of age stories, but this just felt like a mish mash of half thought out ideas and characters rather than a story with a point.

Personally I didn’t mind the art as much as others did, but the pacing of the plot was off, there was no chance to connect with any of the characters, there’s lots of unrealistic dialogue that’s either mostly swearing or deep/poetic back to back, and I’m definitely not a fan of both the cheating bisexual stereotype and bury your gays trope.

I feel like with a ton of work, this has potential (if not a little unoriginal in the realm of ragtag-youth-with-powers coming of age comic) - but it’s far off from being a full fledged comic series.

crookedtreehouse's review

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1.0

Part of me is pleased that we're seeing more books published with queer protagonists, but most of me wishes there were better ones than what's on offer here. Representation is representation but the interviews with the creator made this seem more like pandering to an audience they're hoping to capture, rather than actually working for cool representation. I hope I'm wrong about that.

I'm not sure the creator is queer, and I think that's important. (If you're going to comment about it not mattering if a queer person wrote it, then you're probably a cis-White woman with an irrelevant opinion, and you can fuck off.)

While the representation is great, the story is a mediocre mash up of X-Men, Runaways, and the meta-coming of age narrator a la Christina Ricci in The Opposite Of Sex and a billion 90s films. There isn't an original thought in the story, and apart from an intriguing I Am Telling Two Similar Visual Stories At The Same Time And Cutting Between Them And Then They Both Have The Same Final Shot in the first issue, none of the storytelling tricks are pulled off.

And while the story is not very good, the star of the series is the art, which is terrible. The anatomy is garbage, the coloring can't hide that the artist doesn't know how to draw faces yet, and there's just no stylistic saving graces to hide the complete lack of skill. Sometimes I don't like the art because of a stylistic choice. Sometimes, like here, I don't like the art because it's just badly drawn.

There really is no reason to pick up this book. Somehow, someone thought it was a good idea to license this for a TV show. I can not fathom the possibilty of it being worth producing or watching.